Past week recap: A big down week for the major indexes as institutional investors resumed exiting stocks again. Escalating trade war rhetoric with China and Fed comments confirming rate hike plans were the reasons. A very volatile week, with the DowJones index posting an 1100 point swing, ending with a large decline Friday after having managed large gains earlier in the week. Even John Bogle, legendary 88 year-old founder of the Vanguard S&P500 Index Fund said he had never seen so much market volatility in his lifetime.
Interestingly, many of our stocks were risers, a reminder that our stock lists do not necessarily correlate to the broad market. Trading patterns remain very choppy, limiting new weekly highs/lows and overall returns. One of our analytic indicators of volatility suggest this recent decline is the most extreme of the past two years and overdone.
Major indexes are negative on the year, with values having fallen back to where they were last Thanksgiving, whereas we are still managing to earn some double-digit gains both long and short.
Highlights: 3 new weekly highs in long positions. 4 stocks with double-digit long gains:
- FTK +13%
- EVTC +20%
- URBN +78%
- BXC +281%
4 new weekly lows among short positions. 3 stocks with double-digit short gains:
- ARCB +10%
- CBAY +18%
- MRAM +11%